2010 Oral History Society Annual Conference: 2-3 July, 2010, held in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and National Life Stories at the British Library.

Oral history has become a significant methodology for understanding the contexts of art and design practices.  Interviews with individuals involved in creative practices as producers, consumers or mediators are providing access to undocumented and alternative histories in the arts.   This international conference will bring together the global community of those working with oral history in the fields of architecture, art, craft and design (incorporating fashion, product design, photography, and new media).

Increasing numbers of community projects are now exploring their histories through testimony-based art, craft and design activities. And with the growing use of web-based communication, designers, artists, historians and other arts-based researchers are also engaging with the problem of creating appropriate environments in which oral histories can be stored and disseminated to different audiences and users.  The relationship between content and form is one that researchers in art and design are particularly well-placed to explore.

Rather than privileging the authorial voice in the arts, the conference seeks to examine the meaning and function of oral history in creative practice.  The conference will, therefore, focus on three major themes: History, Practice, and Interpretation.

History:  The contribution of oral history to the documentation and preservation of creative practices; the creation of creative identities through oral history narratives;  the interconnections between the individual practitioner and their wider cultural context; the  narratives of creativity; the construction of  alternative histories; memories of lost practices.

Practice:  Creative practice using oral history and memory work; designers as mediators in oral history projects/works; ethical considerations in using individual memories for art/design work; the use of images as memory prompts; arts-based community oral history projects; oral history as visual narrative.

Interpretation:  Oral history as producer of meaning; oral history and testimony in the museum and gallery; narrative research in the arts and oral history; oral history and arts education; the problem of oral history as biography;  the border between orality, aurality, and visuality.

Proposals are invited of 200-250 words that address one of the three major themes of the conference for talks or presentations of 20 minutes, or panels of one hour. Proposals should clearly state how oral history has informed the project/work/research described, and how it will be used in the presentation. Please send to Belinda Waterman, [Record] [Create] conference administrator, email belinda@essex.ac.uk by the 30 of November 2009.

Partners:
Camberwell College of Arts University of the Arts London
National Life Stories at The British Library Sound Archive
University of the West of England

Contact
Belinda Waterman
email belinda@essex.ac.uk